All Blog Posts (11,363)

Artificial Intelligence is a phrase that often promotes a strong reaction in a lot of people who hear it. There are the gloom and doom prognosticators who tell us that 'Judgement Day', the day the intelligent machines take over and decide we are more trouble than we are worth and wipe us out is near. There are also the overly optimistic prognosticators which tell us that the day AI will take over and we will enter a golden age of humanity beyond our wildest dreams is near. Kasparov charts a…

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. — Edward Gibbon

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God? — Epicurus

George Bush says he speaks to god every day, and Christians love him for it. If George Bush said he spoke to…

"I have met some highly intelligent believers, but history has no record to say that [s]he knew or understood the mind of god. Yet this is precisely the qualification which the godly must claim—so modestly and so humbly—to possess. It is time to withdraw our 'respect' from such fantastic claims, all of them aimed at the exertion of power over other humans in the real and material world.”― Christopher Hitchens, The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the…

“A melancholy lesson of advancing years is the realization that you can't make old friends.”― Christopher Hitchens

Monday mornings and I have never managed to come to any sort of rapprochement. Mondays are not the sort of day one looks forward to for obvious reasons but some are far worse than others. For me, this last Monday was one of the more terrible ones. I was greeted with the news that an old friend had finally lost his ten year battle with cancer. The news from…

My stomach has been roiling with nausea, my eyes perpetually rolling, at the outpouring of religiosity that accompanied the passing of the most successful fantasy merchant of the last century, perhaps of all time.

His message -- God loves you -- is absurd. George Carlin first described religion's visions of the tortures of hell -- then ended with "...but he LOVES you." So much for God's love.

These students are on the right track, as Australia, Canada, Britain and Japan all prove that the way to stop Gun Violence is through banning guns.

Australia, Britain and Canada all have the same mental health problems with students and men, but they don't have the school shootings that America has, like 3 in a month, and likely to get more with the shooters getting coverage on media, thus giving them more…

Every theologian I've ever encountered and even those debating atheists in public like William Lane Craig, Ken Ham, Lee Strobel and Ravi Zacharias, all base their arguments on Deductive Reasoning andthe existence of their God.

Though Logically, using their very own Deductive Logic, all their arguments that assert the existence of a God,…

Don't ask why it's taken so long for me to write. Stipulated that I've been involved in "clicktivist" petitions about gun control and perhaps written my representatives here and there in the wake of past mass shootings. Somehow, this last incident at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High just GOT to me. That and learning that Ohio Republican Senator Rob Portman has an "A" rating with the National Rifle Association pretty well broke my camel's back.

“Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run, but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant.”― Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

This month marked what should be a joyous anniversary of the Mauerfall - the fall of the Berlin Wall. For on the fifth of February the Wall had been down as long as it had been up; precisely…

One question still unanswered in biology and one that is of special interest to me is what happened to our evolutionary branch that made us so different than our nearest relatives on the evolutionary tree, the chimpanzees and bonobos? Putting aside supernatural explanations as well as wild speculation about aliens doing genetic experiments on our race as something to do while taking a break from construction of the pyramids, the correct explanation will be provided by science.

I had read a lot of vitriol from the secular community regarding this book and made a point of re-reading Hitch-22 since Taunton referenced it in his opening description of Christopher Hitchens. So armed I was looking forward to reading it to see if all the ruckus was justified. As it turns out, the book is rather anti-climactic. There is nothing in the book that would lead one to think there was any deathbed conversion. I have respect for Taunton insofar as any discussions of conversion he…

A recent article from Newsweek was making the rounds in social media this week reporting on the new strategic draft issued by the Department of Health and Human services. The draft includes language that defines life as beginning at conception.

"HHS accomplishes its mission through programs and initiatives that cover a wide spectrum of…

“I became a journalist because I did not want to rely on newspapers for information.”― Christopher Hitchens

I started to read Larry Taunton's book, "The Faith of Christopher Hitchens" and he begins the book by painting a picture based on "Hitch 22", Christopher Hitchens' autobiography. Having read "Hitch 22" when it first came out I was struck how the impressions that Taunton was getting and the seemed importance he was assigning to them were not jibbing with my recollections so…

Lately I have been describing myself as a former Young Earth Creationist, Fundamentalist, wacko. At first I thought that the addition of the word "wacko" would cause much backlash. I have not had one negative comment even in Christian forums. I think this is due to a number of reasons. First of all, I am calling myself this and not pointing fingers at anyone else. What is interesting about this is, I can describe beliefs others still have yet they probably think "yes I belive that but I'm…